When I look at all the money the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove gave to the Republicans, it’s hard to believe that so many Democrats survived it. Even in the House races, the Democrats got half a million more votes than the Republicans. I’m glad the corporate money didn’t bring more tangible victories because they might be less inclined to spend their money on politics in the future. But I think it is wrong to argue that the money didn’t have any effect. I believe Obama would have been able to campaign in more states if he hadn’t been getting blasted with Super PAC money in the battlegrounds. I think our victories would have been bigger in the House if we didn’t have to compete with unlimited corporate cash.
What do you think?
Absolutely – and particularly when dark corporate cash starts being used in down ticket races where it can be more effectively – right down to school boards and judges. Easy way to privatise a school – take over the Board…
Yes. I was shocked to see prime time network PAC ads for a state representative race. Millions of dollars for state rep?
It wasn’t my district so I don’t5 know if the ads worked.
Sadly, the ads worked in IL-13, where we should have had David Gill as our congressman, who lost by half a percentage point. The ads against Gill were total lies. It’s heartbreaking. And maddening. They shouldn’t be able to lie like that.
Last I heard they had spent 3 or 4 million against David Gill in our congressional district in central Illinois.
Agreed + add in the voter suppression efforts, the abandonment of the Dean 50 state strategy and you will keep seeing close elections.
True. The cash and voter suppression pervert the system.
I think gerrymandering played a bigger role than the cash in my lone failed prediction — the taking back of the house.
Yes, I think so too. Something must be done about it.
What it amounts to — this has been going on for a long time and it’s only getting worse — is that instead of voters picking their representatives, the representatives pick their voters. Surely it wasn’t meant to work that way.
The solution seems to be replacing the partisan-hack redistricting committees with independent, data-driven ones, but this has to be done on a state-by-state basis, though possibly it could be made a federal requirement under voting rights, for the states to implement.
Ah, but is anyone truly independent? I’d prefer that maps be drawn by equal numbers of members of the two parties so that they have to work together. That probably will become an incumbent protection society but better than “independent” commissions that aren’t.
I was thinking that maybe it could somehow be data-driven. but maybe that’s naive. It seems to me that just as they are using sophisticated tools to ensure their own reelection, they can use them to make a level playing field, if required by law to do so. Maybe the best way is to go for randomness within the simplest shaped geographical section. In other words, go for the very opposite of gerrymandering.
I think that courts already require some minimal cohesiveness, but I recall one district, I think it was in NC, that was two roughly circular pieces held together by a strip about 200 yards wide that ran for miles. Perhaps at-large elections are the answer. Perhaps we should have fewer reps but give them fractional votes. We don’t need to be tied to a sixteenth century system of voting.
Here in Illinois we sometimes have split precincts. I think the precinct should be the basic unit of voting and precincts should not cross village, township, county, city, Congressional district etc. lines. State Assembly/Senate, C. districts would also have to fit in town/city/township/county lines. Much less room for gerrymandering. Reps of all kinds are supposed to be representing communities. The districts should be integral.
I couldn’t agree more
here’s a good link and org that’s working on it, as well as other voting issues http://www.fairvote.org/justices-weigh-partisan-gerrymandering-legislators-seek-solutions
unless the repubs start moderating, this is about the only thing they have that stabds between them and permanent minority status — at best
Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it. I encourage others to look at it too.
the cash bothers me.
THE HIDDEN CASH bothers me even more.
If they had to be accountable, because folks would be able to know who gave to whom,…
I wouldn’t like the money…
but, it’s the secrecy that bothers me even more.
Exactly.
But we also have a demonstration that people power beats money power every time. Which is why the money power goes to divide the people power and get folks to vote against their own best interests.
Folks down your way got really divided this year it seems. Sorry to hear it.
Mobilizing people power takes money and time and it doesn’t hurt to have a charismatic guy like Obama at the top. Can it be replicated for future contenders? That’s what I worry about. Obama’s success dependent on him.
The North Carolina Democratic Party kept doing same-old same-old and it caught up with them. Perdue decided not to run because of the draconian budget she had to do and because of a aide who got into legal trouble. And Dalton got painted with that.
And McCrory’s turnout machine outdid Obama’s slightly. Enough to keep NC out of the blue column and more than enough to put McCrory in office and bring more Republicans with him.
Mobilizing people power takes time; the people who are mobilized can provide enough money to continue mobilizing. The problem is providing motivation for people to get out and do it. Obama through OfA knows how to do that. It hasn’t translated to other candidates of accepted party practice because it threatens the very establishment that has been so cozy with corporate power. It’s known stuff. But going the money route is easier on a candidate and a professional staff. And much more helpful to one’s future career in and out of politics.
Don’t you think the corporateers who paid for Romney to lose will be a wee bit hesitant in 2016? They’re already bitching and crying. If you’re still afraid of corporate cash…after THIS election…then you’re forgetting something. If cash actually bought elections, the GOP would NEVER LOSE.
I agree in principle with Citizens United; under the present set of Constitutional amendments (and lack thereof) speech is money, and vice versa. But money doesn’t buy VOTES. All it bought this year were basically the same ad for every single GOP candidate: Job creators, repeal Obamacare, lower taxes, deficit monster–not one had a real working idea among them that I saw.
Did that work? No. Will it work next time? Of course not.
Money used to buy votes…and legal, free booze bought votes for a long while, too. But we still got the Presidents and reps we voted for in the end, and some damn fine ones, too.
GW Bush has shat the bed for the GOP for a long, long time. The Tea Party keeps his legacy, if not his memory, alive and well. They will hopefully splinter and begin a vibrant Third Party. No, it’s not what we’d like best, but it is easily manipulable by the Democrats and would be a plurality winner–from this moment until the foreseeable future.
I’m more worried about getting more and BETTER DEMOCRATS…
You agree that speech is money? I sure don’t. Because that is this SCOTUS’s intepretation, but it never was before. And the reasoning behind that decision is just pathetic.
The disclaimer was “Under the present set of Constitution and amendments…” and that is correct.
It is going to take a Constitutional amendment to change that interpretation, which has grown through over a hundred years of judicial precedents.
The movement against Citizens United aims to have a Constitutional amendment that prohibits corporations from being considered as persons and money as being considered as speech under the protections of the Constitution. Corporations are grants of privilege from a state government that among other things limits the liability of the persons making the decisions for the corporation. That privilege could also be taken away by the states, should there be a popular movement to do it.
Well said. Much has been written today about how stunned the cons are after this loss, and it’s my favorite thing about this election: they thought they could just walk up and buy it, and they couldn’t.
Actually it’s money is speech. Either way it’s an abomination that, even by the Scotus majority shills, is not based on the Constitution. Money may have failed this time to buy some votes in some races (this opportunity is still alpha, awaiting bug fixes), but I see no reason to think it didn’t buy some. Bachmann and Ryan come to mind in the House, Heller in the Senate. More subtly, big money keeps selling bad policy and broken logic the same way it sells crap on tv. I don’t get how you can think that’s any way to run a country.
I forgot to mention the statehouses. My WI relatives say there was a huge ad barrage that succeeded in returning the state government to the GOP. The money-bought corruption runs through the system from top to bottom: school boards, environmental and energy commissioners, sec of state especially — they, as we saw in Ohio and Florida, have the power to skew elections in their direction. That they didn’t succeed in those state’s big races is an argument to take advantage of this brief window, not to accept the bogus principles laid down by a bought-and-paid-for scotus.
I also commented mostly on the Presidential race, but I think I neglected Booman’s original request for comments about the House races, and the other local races. But the principle still stands: If money really bought votes, the GOP would never lose.
When Obama ran in 2007, his grass-roots financing was historic, and is the ultimate answer to Citizens. Where do billionaires and plutocrats GET THEIR MONEY to begin with…?
The People.
The People always lead. Sounds simple, stupid, naive, whatever…but it’s FOOLING the People that works for the Republicans. And it cannot last. It has a life cycle, and the expiration date of the present GOP strategy was overdue in 2006. It was revived in 2010…and is on the way out again.
I’d had some problems accessing my account to this site…I hope it doesn’t shut me out again and make me create another account…but I appreciate this site on a daily basis. Good intelligent words passing back and forth.
All a lovely distraction from policies and issues that have tangible impacts on real lives. Too bad everyone is now addicted to this most expensive and totally unproductive of meaningful democratic self-governance system of elections. The campaigns begin earlier with each election cycle. Costs are rising faster than NYC luxury digs. Voters are fed mostly stupid and irrelevant campaign talking points. The obsessive focus on polls and poll aggregators that tell us practically nothing has become bizarre. But the political junkie hoi-polloi are already gearing up for 2016 with Democrats calling for Hillary and Republicans calling for Jeb. Why? Because her husband and his brother didn’t leave behind enough destruction and when casting for POTUS, too many in this country want dynasties and not democracy.
Team Romney now claims that they didn’t have enough money. Or maybe it was not enough wealthy people chipping in $2,500 each for the primary. Or too many other GOP POTUS wannabes that didn’t drop out after Mitt won Iowa — or maybe after he won NH since he didn’t actually win Iowa.
It’s a lousy system, but if you want to win, you have no choice but use the system you have. After you win, you can work on changing it. That is exactly what happened.
And I am just as happy we won, as I would have been under a better system — and it was a hell of a lotmore difficult under this one.
Two states have just passed resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end so-called corporate personhood. Many cities and states have passed such resolutions over the past year or two. In other words, there is a powerful movement forming to do just that.
I urge everyone to look for the local movement in your city or state and give it your fullest support.
CU only increased the amount of money sloshing around in the system. Or have we forgotten all the outside funders that produced the “Volvo-driving-latte-drinking-…” takedown of Dean by Kerry forces in Iowa in 2004 and the swiftboaters that went after Kerry?
If election campaigns get any longer, they’ll begin before the voting for the last one is held. Are Americans so lame that they need to see eighteen months to make a decision on the candidates? If so, then there is something seriously wrong with all this modern, high-speed mass communications.
CU is problematical, but maybe not as problematical as the continuing efforts to disenfranchise citizens, making voters stand in line for hours to cast their votes, not counting ballots, threats and intimidation from preachers, priests, employers, etc.
All these things are connected, but the point is, CU is so over the top that it is already a focal point and vehicle for advocacy and mobilization. A remedy for CU doesn’t have to, and indeed shouldn’t, be confined to CU, as if what we had before that was perfectly fine.
As for poor election procedures, I think the Justice Department needs to look at the whole thing, voting machines and all, and develop standards and requirements, just as they do for other civil rights issues. But the implementation will have to remain local, as e.g. with schools. That is a basic feature of the federal system, and it is not NECESSARILY a bug.
One thing that really bothered me was the amount of cash that was poured into our local races for the Oregon state house and senate.
Koch funds really unbalanced the spending, ads, campaign literature, etc. in favor of the Republican candidates. The difference was overwhelming, and Republican candidates won easily.
I get the feeling a significant amount of that corporate cash is going to grooming future candidates for major state and eventually US Senate and Rep campaigns.
Once these guys succeed, then name recognition and incumbency becomes very hard to overcome.
What, did OR go Repub?!
Dems recaptured the state House, but our local races in Central Oregon for Oregon state house and senate districts were laughable.
Koch money enabled the Repubs to buy heavy TV ads, lots of print and campaign literature, online ads, etc. etc. 10-to-1 wouldn’t be overstating the case.
OK, CU says you can’t stop people from political speech which equals money because it is their first amendment right.
But can laws prevent OUTSIDE money? Yes, I contributed to other states but maybe I should have been barred. Should Texans intervene in Oregonian elections? And vice versa?
If it’s the local rich guys buying the ads, the locals recognize them and take that into account.
Even if unlimited corporate cash doesn’t hurt the Democratic Party, it is still bad for our democracy.
The issue isnt that Democrats wont have enough cash to compete with Republicans. Its that theyll have to tailor their policy positions in order to get it. The corporate cash puts a thumb on the scale for corporatist policies. It skews our democracy because it makes it even harder for our Reps to be able to reserve some of their attention and political capital for middle class and working class issues. Thats the problem.
I definitely agree with you, and so does Karl Rove. At a breakfast for Super PAC donors in Boston yesterday, Rove “offered them a grim upside: without us, the race would not have been as close as it was.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/little-to-show-for-cash-flood-by-big-donors.html?_r=0&
amp;hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1352408426-EH6PcZRkYpoOKoTmcA4AhQ
And while we’re talking about Rove, here’s another very interesting article from today’s Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/roves-on-air-rebuttal-of-foxs-ohio-vote-call-raises-qu
estions-about-his-role.html?ref=media
Your post identifies the two main reasons that Repubs need have no fear of losing their Do-Nothing House—Citizens United and the 2010 census Gerrymander.
The loss of the 2010 election was of course catastrophic because we lost so many state legislatures and/or gov’nors that Repubs ran the table on redistricting after the census in many states. So (for example) the turd Ryan was given a revised district that was so red he’ll never lose it. PA was another state of massive Repub gerrymandering.
Thus we see the incredible factoid (which almost no one knows) that (as usual) Dem House candidates received over 500,000 more votes than Repub candidates nationwide, yet Repubs control the House by over 30 votes! Pretty frustrating and wildly anti-democratic, just like most features of our appalling “system”.
What if such facts were reported on the nightly “news” and not just by Thinkprogress? What if REPUBS had obtained half a million more House votes than Dems and were looking at a 200-235 minority position for a decade? I think The Chamber might do something about it, haha.
Which takes us to Citizens United. Someone will have to grind the numbers out at some point and show the actual spending disparities for the seats KKKarl Rover and The Chamber just bought/retained. The political scientists will need to do some more work here. But generally and historically, the smaller the district involved, the more crucial the amount and the ratio of spending. I’d guess the corporate money was very important in all these House seats. Pelosi said the lack/disparity of money was the biggest challenge.
And finally, as another commenter here has noted, the likely effect of such cash dumps on state seats and their tiny districts is massive. Which only reinforces the gerrymander problem!
As I said above, there is a national movement to overturn Citizens United and the equation of corporate personhood with human personhood. I agree with you, this has to be corrected. A very positive factor is that hardly anybody supports Citizens United — independents and most rank and file Republicans hate it as much as Democrats do. So get busy!
INCREDIBLE INDEED!
Very important, and it’s mainly due to gerrymandering.
Very good points. And since some of them counter my points…and I don’t have a rebuttal…I submit.
We have seen the Democrats fight back effectively in the last decade, when they were down…Dean’s 50-state strategy, no-seat-left-behind was amazing and helped a lot in the middle of the Bush Years. I don’t think it is still the prerogative as it was under him…but I don’t know for sure.
But Citizens is the law of the land, and it could have been much, much worse. Gerrymandering takes care of itself, every ten years…and is a roll of the dice, when it comes down to it, of which Party is in power in a census year.
I want to encourage all Booman Tribuners to grab a copy of today’s NY Times — and possibly frame it. Reading the Times this morning (yesterday’s national edition was out too early for the election results) was kind of like hearing the other shoe drop. In article after article, as well as on the op-ed page, it was as if the Republican spin machine had suddenly come to a grinding halt. The phony narratives were conspicuous by their absence, and I found myself reading something resembling the truth. The difference is amazing, and it is a phenomenon that begs for explanation. How long it will stay this way is another question, but I guarantee such a change would be good for the Times itself. Could it have something to do with the new executive editor (since June, Jill Abramson — “seizing the moment” to make a long overdue change?
Nick Kristof, whom I respect, has an important column. The tone of it (it begins: “This was one that the Republicans really should have won”) didn’t quite appeal to me — but it wasn’t meant to, clearly the piece was addressed to Republicans. And what he told them was, “Wise up or die”. And he added what I thought was a very perceptive point. (Of course we know this, but how often does an influential columnist come out and say it directly to the GOP?) —
“Part of the problem, I think, is the profusion of right-wing radio and television programs. Democrats complain furiously that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity smear the left, but I wonder if the bigger loser isn’t the Republican Party itself. Those shows whip up a frenzy in their audience, torpedoing Republican moderates and instilling paranoia on issues like immigration.
“All this sound and fury enmeshes the Republican Party in an ideological cocoon and impedes it from reaching out to swing-state centrists, or even understanding them. The vortex spins ever faster and risks becoming an ideological black hole.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/opinion/kristof-can-republicans-adapt.html?scp=1&sq=can%20repu
blicans%20adapt?&st=cse
In other words, as you long as you guys have this Fox News/hate radio thing around your neck, you’re going to keep losing from here on — an interesting problem amongst the many that now face the GOTP. Really, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.
Who knows? Maybe they will end up advocating reinstatement of the fairness doctrine?
I wonder. I still think that whether the cons try “reaching out” or not, they won’t change one bit on their execrable policies, and that isn’t going to help them either.
They have cooked their own goose, that’s for sure. But Kristof’s right, unless they do it, they are finished as a national party. On the other hand, it’s not even clear they can do it, and even if they can it is definitely not happening overnight. But let them suck on it for a while. My word of the day is “Schadenfreude”.
There’s no decent argument not to cut it off completely. We can come close to that without running afoul of the five Supreme Crooks’s obscenity by any number of tweaks, if the will is there.
The abuse of corporate personhood started with tendentious interpretations in court cases, not in the amendment itself. Citizens United is possibly the worst, but far from the only, bad consequence of that. The problem is not only Citizens United, but to much legal corporate power in a democracy. How far can we go with this?
Anti-corporatism is a movement that can attract both broad-based support, both populist/liberal and populist/conservative.
Sad to say, the ACLU is as guilty as anyone in marketing this scam. A strange and sickening alliance. I think much of the poison can be neutralized without/before an amendment can kick in. Like requiring corporations to propose any political advertising to stockholders and getting at least majority approval. I mean, who can be against shareholder rights?
One person’s odious lobbyist is another’s precious advocate. One person’s pariah ‘special interest’ is another’s safeguard against government neglect or abuse.
Lobbying is speech. To try to codify it and put it into a statute is a tricky business, especially in as brief a one as a Constitutional amendment. I agree it is necessary. Man, it won’t be easy…and it really is something that almost everyone can agree on, the need to reform it.
Except money whores like Karl Rove…he made out like a BANDIT this time, but he’ll probably have to retire…
ha ha
Interestingly enough, after seeing all that was being bought by that cash, I was more motivated to give more of my own cash to the Obama campaign. In fact, I gave more than ever before. It would be interesting to see if other folks did the same.
No question about it. That was just another reason to personally resent the money power; I couldn’t begrudge the Democratic campaigns for asking for contributions, but I sure resented Citizens United for making it even more necessary than it has already been.
I am not ashamed to say I have never given Obama a dime. He was not my first choice in 2008, and still isn’t.
But…he hasn’t needed the money. He needed my VOTE. He got it. He won. And…I’m an impoverished artist. If I’d had more money, I’d probably have given him some–in ’08. But he did just fine this year as an incumbent, with Wall Street and Hollywood and those that knew he would win, those that live in reality, who give to the winners every four years, expecting returns for their investments in ’13 and beyond.
The modern Republican Party is dead. GW Bush, FOX, Limbaugh, the Teagbaggers, et al have killed it. No Republican who makes it through the primaries for the foreseeable future can survive a general election with the incredible odious baggage of fealty they must swear to their Party’s extremists. All the Democrats have to do is use their own words, verbatim, from their own lips, against them in TV ads–something I SCREAMED for the Dems to do against Bush, but they never did, and finally DID do this time. And it worked. 47%, anyone?
It really is as simple as that.
As long as the ROI is a net gain, the cash will keep coming.
Some shareholder lawsuits against management for flushing corporate money down the shitter would be very beneficial.
That’s a good idea, although it would have to be pro-active (targeted to the future), and I’m not even sure what the argument would be. Management can always argue, “well we tried — we represented our interests, and we definitely kept it closer than it would have been, kept control of the House,” etc. What they did this time was legal (I think — who really knows? that’s another thing they should demand to know.)
But perhaps organizations of shareholders could formally support the movement against Citizens United and bogus personhood on the grounds that these impose a burden on their companies to waste vast amounts of capital.
I like the way you think…and litigate…
Until Citizens United is overturned (which I hope comes about in the 2nd term of Pres. Obama) – we must keep up our vigilance and be ready to “counter” with grassroots involvement!
I heard one figure that Bachmann outspent Graves in MN-06 by 12-1. I saw nothing but wall to wall ads for Bachmann the last two weeks, most of them disgusting things.
She won by a couple of thousand votes.
You’re damned right the money made a difference. Even if we assume the effect of ads is fairly low, those ads were easily enough to keep her in power.
I cannot agree that 12-1 in spending changed the minds of two thousand voters. No way.
All I ever saw was, basically, the same damn ad, over and over again. All that does is hypnotize people…NOT. They tune it out. They stop listening.
They stop WORKING. After a certain point. 12-1 tells me that point came and went before she got the votes she needed to win. And Republicans LIKE their Representatives to be crazy, the more the better.
She had those two thousand votes probably from her perceived power by those that voted for her that came directly from running for President and being on a national stage for as many years as she has. Once Dick Gephardt ran for President–and made it close, coming in third in more than a few states–he was Representative for Life, and went on to luck into the Speaker job.
I just cannot believe that ads win elections when you see the same one twenty times.
Booman et al, Have ya’ll seen this?
Damn, this mofo really thought he had it in the bag. They really DIDN’T write a concession speech. The whole group really bought into the hype. Here’s the thing. The Romney camp and the whole of the GOP, underestimated the Obama camp ground game. The thought they could do the same demonizing of social groups as they did in 2000 & 2004 (all those gay marriage amendments, Karl Rove convinced so many state legislatures to put on the ballot). They underestimated the black, brown, young, and women voters who were damn well pissed that the GOP was trying to take their votes away, trying to get them to “self-deport” or tried to take away a woman’s right to choice whether or not she wants to carry her rapist/molester/deadbeat/whatever’s baby. They forgot the number one rule when it comes to poking a lion: AT SOME POINT, THE LION WILL STRIKE BACK. In the case of this election, the LIONS savaged the shit out of Romney!!!
“Adviser: Romney “shellshocked” by loss”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/?pageNum=1&tag=
page
And they were shocked when the Secret Service detail vanished after the concession speech and Tagg had to drive Dad back to the hotel.
I have long believed that converting a wing nut is like teaching a pig to sing. It’s not only a waste of effort but it annoys the pig as well. The only solution is to defeat them and Obama has showed us how to do it. Of course they have Fox News to keep them in a constant state of outrage and massive amounts of dark corporate money, at least for now. Time we do something about that by building populist campaign organizations starting now for the midterm elections.
First we need to help this outrage thing along. This means going off the fiscal cliff or as Krugman puts it, the slope, without so much as the blink of an eye. If this is done right the Republicans get the blame and our base will be energized. Because pain is involved the outrage is amplified, it just needs some direction. Obstructionist votes should immediately result in direct attacks against them by name inside their own district.
Obama’s campaign taught us how to do this. Do the analysis of which Republican needs to be targeted for removal to determine if it is possible to remove them due to the makeup of their district or an extra dose of crazy. I hope we can still identify enough after the 2010 gerrymander to win a majority in the House and maintain a majority in the Senate with filibuster reform, unfortunately probably a small list.
Using Obama style techniques, build political opposition organizations against these targeted candidates on the ground in those districts. So what are they going to do about it? How could they fight back against no declared candidate from the other side? Their only viable defense would be to stop obstructing. The worse the member behaves, the stronger the organized opposition becomes. This is the equivalent to Fox News saying, “Do you know what those liberals did today?” The only difference is this will be true, documented and delivered in a targeted manner.
The final step would be to recruit qualified candidates to run in these districts. The newly recruited candidate would have available the polling, voter information and organization from this effort already in place at the beginning of the next campaign. The key to this is to recruit non blue dog candidates plus Obama has to stand his ground especially if it results in real pain. The idea is to extend the populist campaign to the next off season election. Maybe the Republicans will compromise in an attempt to defeat this effort. Either way, we all win. Worst thing that can happen it that it creates jobs and involves more people in the political process.